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Case Study

Elite partnerships are about collaborating to focus on creative solutions, with trust and communication to evolve these solutions over time. And this level of innovation has been at the core of HGS’s service expansion and performance excellence for a Fortune 200 healthcare and personal products company.

In 2005, this company enlisted HGS to handle all consumer services, including inbound calls as well as emails and assists with social media customer care. As the market matured and competition increased, the client decided to build on the successful relationship with a services expansion.
In 2012, HGS formed an inbound/outbound Oral Pharmaceuticals team, which is a part of the business that works with the field sales reps and the dentist offices to place and renew product orders. In addition to calls requesting information, coupons, and other consumer support, our agents handle FDA-related product complaints and adverse-reaction reporting. These aspects of the program require the specialized expertise of two licensed practicing nurses, one registered nurse, and one dental hygienist.

Annual Volumes

Inbound Phone

Outbound Phone

Mailbox Orders
(email, fax, social
media, etc.)

Consumer

150,000 contacts

3,500 contacts

60,000 contacts

Professional

200,000 contacts

90,000 contacts

40,000 contacts

Total

350,000 contacts

93,500 contacts

100,000 contacts

Professional Services

HGS handles phone, email, and fax support for professional-service customers, including dental offices, drug stores, and government agencies. This aspect of the program is focused on sales and includes inbound and outbound orders for toothpaste, toothbrushes, and prescription products.
Agents also take calls from the client’s sales management and sales representatives, assisting with CRM resources and territory management as needed.

Program PerformanceThe client has regularly cited HGS for high performance:

“HGS has continued to achieve outstanding customer satisfaction results, as indicated in mystery-shopper and customer-satisfaction surveys, providing a high level of service to consumers, while consistently earning best-in-class ratings and surpassing the competition forthe past several years.”

“HGS has achieved excellent performance against service and quality KPI targets, exceeding nearly all benchmarks. Further, cost discipline has been outstanding, delivering better financial results than targeted in the budget for two consecutive years.”

Because this client has experienced profitable growth and expansion worldwide, HGS has been committed to innovation that renews sales, specifically in the Pharmaceuticals division. HGS works with the field representative teams to renew orders, with a high-performing outbound initiative that focuses on DDS office recruitment and renewals with complementary product bags. “We work closely with the client to make sure we have the product knowledge and know-how to sell these products,” says Matt Sanders, HGS client executive. “With our outbound focus, we are able to connect and reconnect with these offices to ensure familiarity with client products. This contributes to brand recognition and renewals for our client partner.”

HGS currently provides inbound customer care, as well as email and social media monitoring, to support this client’s noteworthy growth, supporting three business units: oral care, personal care, and home care. In November 2015, HGS celebrated 10 years of partnership with this client. The day was full of festivities as the client allowed HGS to close down the phones and take the team off site. Together, HGS and the client partner reflected on what life was like ten years ago in the world and how much things have changed—with breakthrough successes in service level, abandon rate, attrition, quality, and innovation, such as the social media program and deep dive monitoring.

1. AHT Reduction

How We Do It
HGS aimed to improve efficiencies and provide customers a low-effort customer experience to ensure this client partner maintained market leadership. To target a significant improvement over the 2014 benchmark, HGS implemented a Time Study and monthly AHT benchmark to keep improvement closely on track with team goals. The Time Study comprises auto capture of phone number, with a new telephone number field, to ensure fast handling. CRM notes and dual monitors for agents were additional enhancements to support the team. The HGS initiatives in this area helped empower agents to resolve issues faster, with shorter hold times and lower effort for both callers and agents. A strong floor presence, with management in place and high-profile and consistent branding, ensures coaching to drive documentation during calls, with more coaching opportunities and stronger recap, for fewer errors overall.

Business Result
For 2015, the HGS team has achieved a dramatic 24-second reduction in AHT. Notably, tenured agents dropped an average of 66 seconds.

2. Improved Attrition

How We Do It
HGS’s training and employee engagement initiatives are strong contributors to retention success. A focus on performance excellence starts on day one, with a new hire class, specialized product training, and consumer advocacy meetings, including training on “Experience Engineering” and “Positive Language.” HGS also supports gamification, which employs contests and the healthy spirit of competition to encourage development. For example, the program’s Agent of the Month program tracks and promotes positive qualities such as positive attitude, product knowledge, and teamplayer mentality.

Business Result
Attrition averages 40 percent for the Oral Pharmaceuticals division of the HGS team, with 62 percent of team members committed to the Oral Pharmaceuticals team for more than a year. And seven agents have been with the program since inception.

3. Drive Cost-Containment

How We Do It
In July 2015, HGS performed address validation services on this client’s behalf, intended to reduce undeliverable mailpieces shipped by the client or their partners for a specific project as defined by the client. HGS used software licensed by USPS along with a certified process for mailing list management. The process is intended to improve mail deliverability by providing current, standardized, delivery point coded addresses for business moves. HGS made an attempt to match each name and address against the national database of approximately 160 million records. When HGS discovered an updated address, team members appended it to the original file and maintained the integrity and layout of the original mailing list (as requested by the client). If an updated address was not available, HGS provided the best explanation as to why a specific address was flagged as undeliverable.

Business Result
HGS made a direct contribution to bottom-line cost-containment for the client, saving 15 percent of the initial mailing cost and checked 53,385 addresses.

Flag Description

Quantity

Shipping Charges Saved

% of Total

Uncorrectable Addresses

1,869

$28,035

3.5%

Moves

1,684

$25,260

3.1%

Vacant Addresses

2,774

$41,610

5.1%

Recommended for Contact

1,895

$28,425

3.5%

Total

8,222

$123,330

15.4%

4. Quality Improvement

How We Do It
In 2013, HGS employed Deep Dive Monitoring for a 100 percent quality review on one agent per day. This practice allows for visibility of trends by agent. As a result, HGS is able to provide agents with in-depth, personalized coaching to areas of strength and areas of opportunity.

Business Result
HGS has been able to identify trends per agent that would not likely have been noticed with traditional monitoring levels. Monitoring scores, such as the quality of a call based on the Phone Validation form and the Order Validation form (score cards containing pre-set attributes), improved to 94.60 percent in 2013 compared to 93.91 percent in 2012. Agents who have been through Deep Dive Monitoring have expressed significant knowledge and personal improvement. HGS has also been able to identify team-wide trends and tailor recurrent training more accurately based on areas of opportunity.

5. Digital Solutions

How We Do It
With a focus on outreach and new product promotion and monitoring via corporate pages, Facebook, HGS has found growth in such social media benchmarks as likes, shares, and mentions of product launches.

Business Result
The digital solutions HGS provides answer to today’s digital consumer needs. In response to one promotion, HGS received 243 reviews of this product, with 237 four- and five-star reviews. This client has experienced 10 percent fewer escalations as a result of social media monitoring, and a 41 percent increase in mentions.

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